Reviews for Orbits

[pepperpunk]

Leaves. In. Spaaaaace!

Fantastic artwork, colour schemes and menu design.

Gameplay is lacking, though. Adding gravity to the planets would make the game more fun since we'd be able to make slingshot manoeuvres.. and actually orbit the planets as the name suggests. In addition, keeping the predicted trajectory line in place while the ship is in motion for the second and subsequent player clicks would greatly reduce the frustration of playing the game, since it's very hard to send the ship in the right direction without that line to guide you.

AndyBrown responds:

Thank you for your review, we have plans for a sequel and will consider your feedback while making it! I originally had a version where all of the planets had gravity and there was no downwards gravity, but we thought that the downwards gravity would have been easier for the players and still be fun- since it was a lot harder to guesstimate your trajectories after the first click.

[Ericho]

Nice for what it is

I would probably enjoy this a lot more if I had some idea as to how to get ahead in it. The weirdest thing is that you don't have much control over your ship. It would help if you could get a clearer view of what's going on and where your ship will land. I will have to give you credit for creating some fairly good music to go with this. It's very ambitious sounding music and it makes you want to go on. I like how it brings a sweet tone to the overall game.

The graphics weren't bad, but I felt this could have been more detailed. At least this has a fairly fun appeal to it. I guess next time, you could make it so that you didn't have to start all the way from the beginning on the first level if you fail. The colors look fairly nice in this. It really looks like you had a fun time making this with its nice appeal.

AndyBrown responds:

Thank you for your critique, I've tried it with the trajectory lines always on, and it doesn't work out very well in motion. We are thinking about working on a sequel where you can pause the ships movement to aim your trajectory changing shot.. and offering the standard slingshot type of control like most of these games have as a default option and leaving in this skill click system as an optional gameplay mode. Also you can skip the tutorial in the first level, there is a skip button on the bottom left =)

[andonin]

horrible

Have you ever studied physics at all? the ship's arc is unpredictable, your gravity isn't relative to planets it's only down, even then the gravity physics are wrong. You could claim air resistance but then their is the fact that your in space! Theoretically there should be no air! I feel as though little thought was put into the actual mechanics of the game

AndyBrown responds:

I actually have not had the opportunity to spend as much time as I would like studying physics, you have me there, but the ships arc felt even more unpredictable when there was planetary gravity on every level and we decided to go with what we thought was fun and easier to play. We did put a lot of thought into the gameplay, but we were not trying for realism, but for fun, I'm sorry that we disappointed you in both categories.

[Rasgriz]

Not orbits, brah

You call it orbits, but the planets don't influence your trajectory. Instead, you fall towards the bottom of the screen for no given reason.
Hell of a misnomer.

It's a fun game, though.

And by the way, if you want to test it on a laggy system, just open up windows on a swift system until it lags the hell out. On some of the modern beasts of computers people have nowadays, it might take a LOT of windows, but still.

AndyBrown responds:

Thank you for your review, and we will try to represent the title of the game with the gameplay better next time! I originally had a version where every planet had gravity, but it made it a lot harder to judge your trajectories after the first click so we figured we would stay with the downwards gravity since it felt easier to feel where the ship would go.

[Istentelen]

Very strange physics

I hate the physics of this game! The way the ship will go when you click near it is totally unpredictable. If it's not random, then it's completely different from real world physics becouse the ship always turns in a in a totally different direction than one would expect! The least you should do is give a description in the tutorial about how the game decides the new direction of the ship. Also a helping line such as what you get before the 1st click would be very helpful to have trough the entire level. (Or you could normalize the games physics but I think that would be much hader.)
I also really dislike that you lose speed and garvitate tovard the bottom of the screen instead of the planet(s). In the space there is nothing to slow you down so you keep your velocity until you change it or hit something, and only gravity can change your trajectory. It should be like that in this game too.

AndyBrown responds:

Thank you for voicing your opinions, we will use this information to make better games in the future! The direction the ship will go is based on the location of your mouse and where the ship is when you click - if you were to draw a line from where you clicked, to the center of the ship, then continued that line out - that would be the direction that the ship moves when you click.